Green, green, green ....

is all of my clothing ... the words don't work perfectly with the melody of the German children's song I grew up with, but that's ok.
It's an old one from the 19th century and each verse is about a different color and profession.

"Green, green, green is all of my clothing, green, green, green is everything I have. Therefore I love everything that is green because my sweetheart is a hunter."
The other colors are red for the rider, blue for the sailor, black for the chimney sweep, white for the miller, and colorful for the painter.

I had to think of this song when a friend said she had so many clothes in green and would I make her some earrings to go with them?
She chose the beads for the folded peyote and I have to say that the shiny green reminding of beetles' wings was a great choice with the matte green for the inside.

So, what next?

The cat moth

I live on the first floor and sometimes I get little night guests at the window behind my bed. Mostly they are moths, but I've also had grasshoppers stop by which probably live in the plants on the roof terrace above me.
I can never resist attempting to take photos of my visitors, but it's not easy because of the reflection, because of my small old camera, because I can't use flash although it's night, because this particular window is definitely not the cleanest in the house (I hate having to move the bed), and a cat hoping to claw its way through the glass to get to this fun toy also doesn't help. Ponder went completely nuts for visitors and would keep tapping the glass to which all of them have been surprisingly oblivious, some even stayed for an hour.

The other day this beauty came by, let me take a few pictures and then flew back into the night, as if it had just come by for me to admire it shortly.
Its color was kind of a ghostly white, very pretty, but the light of my reading lamp changed that in the picture. I love that I was able to catch the shimmer in the wings a little.

Shortly after that, Heather (my New Zealand artist friend whose cat paintings I use for the HeatherCats) sent me a picture from an Instagram account. koty_vezde edits animal pictures to give them cat heads or faces, with very surprising results at times. My reply was that I would probably have freaked out if my moth visitor had had a cat head, and Heather wrote that I should make a cat moth.
It didn't take a second for me to know that I indeed would do that.
A while ago, I hadn't been able to resist some fabulous ceramic cat heads with fangs although at the time I had no idea at all what to do with them.
Now, however ...

I went right in.
Bead embroidery, obviously.
I couldn't bead a bezel for the cat head, due to its shape, so I could just as well use the loop for the bail construction.
Sequins for the wings, of course.
A sparkly, "fuzzy" body, just because.

I began by drawing on where I wanted the head to go. It wouldn't be glued on completely as the idea of an edging around the ears didn't appeal to me, and I didn't want the ears to get in the way while embroidering the body.
Next I started the body with some old bugle beads that a friend brought me from an American fleamarket, so I knew nothing about them. She got me different kinds and my first choice was a gunmetal, but my needle didn't even go through most of them twice which was very annoying, so I gave up after a few stitches and turned to the other kind instead. They look black, but if you look at them in the light, they are more like a very dark garnet with a luster which makes them sparkle really beautifully. They are not regular, but I think they worked well here, anyway.

For the wings, I decided on two different colors, black (shiny and matte) because it fits a slightly creepy little cat moth and cognac to pick up on the head's color.
After finishing, I felt that the body was too flat next to them, so I generously added black bicones and black-blue firepolished crystals to it. Major sparkle!

Next the head got glued on, and with all the shine and sparkle, I spontaneously decided that this was not just a cat moth, but a magical fairy cat moth who needed a little headdress (I blame Mabel, my muse, she puts things in my brain).
And while I was already going over the top, I couldn't resist tiny dangles (size 15 beads, by the way, that I had to pick bit by bit off a dustpan after somecat threw the bead tube on the floor and the lid came off by itself).
Last but not least I put on a faux leather backing and did an edging. It was tempting to go completely wild with it, but it would have been too much, so it had to be very understated matte black seed beads.

I'll be showing you several pictures to give you an idea of how much the angle changes the color effect and I also have a not so great video to really show you the sparkle.

Tears for the crocodile

We all know crocodile tears, but I call this new pendant "Tears for the crocodile" for a reason.
Since I had been a kid, the "Great White One" (you can find a picture of him from the local newspaper here) at the Wilhelma, the Zoological-Botanical Garden in Stuttgart, had been one of my favorites. No, he was not a shark, he was a saltwater crocodile who lived at the zoo from 1967 until his too early death in 2000. He was an absolute magnificent beast.
I never caught his feeding time, but I saw him jump out of the water once, maybe because a visitor looked too yummy, and I'll never forget that incredible power that literally made me gasp.
While I loved to see him, it also made me sad (zoos do that to me or rather did, I haven't been to one in years).

The tiger eye was another rock from my stash. Because of its slightly weird shape, I had never had an idea for it, but I loved the color.
Once again, bead embroidery came to the rescue. Only when I had beaded the bezel, I got this vibe of an eye. The eye of a crocodile ...

Then I remembered the Picasso Tila beads that had been in one of my bead orders. Sometimes the bead shop I buy from offers surprise packs with leftovers at a sale price. It takes me back to the "Wundertüten" (literally: Miracle bags) of my childhood. I love surprises, but I also love the challenge of unknown beads. Sometimes I get a color or a shape or a size I would never have thought of buying. Honestly, who can keep up with all of those beads?
Now the time for the Tilas had come because the color reminded me of the "Great White One". I used them at a slant around the bezel for depth and added another flat row all around. I know crocodiles rarely wear gold ;-) but it fit both the tiger eye and the Tilas so well, and so do the "tears" which also happened to be from the surprise pack, by the way.
I did contemplate adding a pupil to the eye for a bit, but decided against it in the end.

You may see something else in this pendant, but for me it was a real trip in the past although that hadn't been planned at all from the beginning.

Diving into fall

If you asked me, I would tell you that fall colors are not really my thing, but only in clothing that I wear myself.
Fall colors in nature or jewelry? Wonderful.

This red jasper definitely says fall.
There are stones in my drawer that I just keep staring at for years and there are stones that had more settings than my FB account.
The jasper rock has gone through a few in wire crochet and knit, but something was never right about it.

Sometimes I'm stuck creatively, usually not for lack of ideas, but because I have a hard time to get some things started. It may be something difficult, a big project, something on my list that needs the right moment, something that I haven't worked out completely yet, something I am missing some beads for, there are many reasons. And sometimes I am just not feeling it, because of the heat (I had that a LOT this summer), because I'm not feeling well and don't manage to push myself, or because I'm simply too lazy.
For me, one way out of this is to crochet one of my little baskets. Or two. Sometimes I fill them up right away, sometimes I don't. It's the only design I don't mind recreating and still there's the moment of surprise because the filling isn't always the same.
Another way has opened up for me when I started doing bead embroidery. Glue something on some beading surface and see what happens.

So what happened to the jasper after I glued it on?
First step, the bezel. I still had some beads in my "workbox" from working on another pendant and they were perfect.

Now what?
The jasper had always reminded me of the 50s, not just in color, but also the one line going across the stone which makes me think of curtains with a pattern like this one (only thrown together quickly to give you an idea)?

I would make the pendant into a rectangle with rounded corners and embroider a pattern like that.
Well, it wasn't really a surprise that I went slightly overboard with the lines, both in number and how wavy they became.
So after filling the fields up with some of my favorite seed bead colors, it reminded me more of abstract stained glass which made me just as happy.
The golden edging can only be seen from the side and even the beaded bail is hidden in the back because I didn't want to disturb the "window" look.

I think my little jasper may at last have come to rest after all those years. That was a long journey.
Now can someone tell me to finally get started on my project procrastination list?

A history of broomsticks (and a staff)

Are you ready to say goodbye to summer?
I welcomed September with a bead embroidered pendant in fall colors, but my mind has already wandered off to October and Halloween.

Today's design is not new to me. I have used it in one of my very first bead bracelets, even if it was a mix of beaded and bead loomed then.

Later I beaded a staff for my Fairy Queen, in this case the stick was beaded around a wood skewer.

That finally led to the broomstick for my little snowman in which the handle is again beaded around a wood skewer, but as the "twigs" are up in the air, I had to give them more substance by putting the beads on wire.

There is another broomstick, but that is for a future post because it's a WIP.
When the idea for today's item came to me, I was surprised myself. How had I not thought of that earlier?
Let's go for a ride, my friends ... with these broomstick earrings!

Nosy neighbors family portrait

Can you believe it?
I was getting ready to have a nice cup of chai latte on a lazy Saturday afternoon and who turns up? The nosy neighbors!

The nosy neighbors made their first appearance here.
Always make sure to build your walls high enough if you have neighbors like these, or you will never be able to do anything in peace.

These are Hildy and Bruno, I guess they like chai latte, too?

Random Saturday - Putting more happy yellow into my life!

Do you remember my childhood memories with the colorful "Arabella / Boston" dishes from the 60s? It really revived my love of yellow. Not that it had gone away completely, but yellow is a little hard to use in jewelry, at least for me, and it doesn't work on me as clothes. I always wanted at least one room with yellow walls, but wasn't even allowed to have that (that's a longer story I'm going to spare you).
Dishes are a very good way to get yellow into my life.

Now there's one problem with my Arabella set.

Look at the cup. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a but a sip for me (I only drink coffee as a cold brew or with ice cream, by the way). I'm not good at elegantly holding a cup with my pinky up in the air, unlike a friend in school who did this without even noticing which never failed to amuse me.

For daily use I'm very much a mug girl, the bigger the better. I have a LOT of mugs and while I am using quite a few of them, the biggest one is my favorite. If it isn't too hot, which it usually isn't because I prefer cold drinks, I don't even hold it by the handle because it can get quite heavy when it's full.
Big mugs or cups are also a childhood memory for me. My godmother's father who was a farmer had a big breakfast cup that I was very jealous of even as a child. I can still see him sitting at that table and smell cows and hay and country air - not meant negatively at all - and feel comfortable and happy watching him drink his morning coffee.

So I had this idea ... how about looking for a potter in the area and ask if they could make me a mug in yellow? Of course I could have looked for a yellow mug online, but 1. I like handmade - who would have thought, 2. I like to support local artisans if possible - not always easy depending on what you need or want, 3. I didn't want a solid yellow, but one that reminded me of Arabella's stripy appearance.

I checked online, found the pottery "Töpferei auf dem Jackenhof" (a former farm in a village not very far from me which has a lot of old farms), and sent them an email with the Arabella picture explaining what I wanted. A few more emails went back and forth to clear up details about the size and shape of the two mugs. Yes, by now I had decided that I of course needed two.

Yesterday I got notice that I could pick them up. My "chauffeur", who hadn't been on the Jackenhof before either, and I were amazed at how idyllic the house was situated, away from the street, an alpaca grazing on the other side (there's an alpaca farm), trees and sculptures underneath. It may sound corny and silly, but I got this 80s feeling of what we called the "alternatives" here in Germany, making me think of hand knitted socks and sweaters, the beginning of the "green" thinking, drinking tea from handmade pottery, colorful neck scarves from India, and actually I read afterwards that the workshop had opened in 1987, so maybe that's what I felt, and it was good ;-)

Welcomed inside, I asked for my mugs, and the potter said she had two choices, one was more of a brownish yellow, but course I immediately picked the bright yellow one. She said that the dark ones were made with a glaze and the other two painted which gave the mugs just the look I had wanted. I was so happy and will love using these, I'm sure. Maybe it's a good thing the pottery is not that easy to reach with public transportation or I could put down quite a bit of money there although the mugs were very affordable and even the price for the standard mugs although I had asked for bigger ones.
Can you tell from the picture that they don't look exactly the same? The shape, size, and top edges are a little different. I like that because it shows they are handmade.

As it is, I couldn't resist getting a cat - anyone surprised? - which is a salt shaker, but will be just a cat for me, and a liqueur cup whose color and shape I fell in love with and which I will happily use for my beloved Drambuie.

Do you have a favorite mug or a favorite piece of pottery?